Media Manipulation Today II.
Today, I would like to continue this extensive topic of media manipulation of the mass media with several real examples, both in terms of the meaning that information can bring us, and mainly in the sphere of journalistic ethics. There are an incredible number of examples, because today's capital system is based on negative manipulation without any moral rules. Ethics today is just a tool of power. So in reality, it is useless to society. I will also mention the legal rules that are written on paper in such a way that you think, everything is fine here, but practice is different and legal manipulation plays a fundamental role here.
Media and journalistic ethics
I will briefly give two examples. One is about a young Syrian boy named Aljan, who drowned in the Mediterranean Sea in 2015 while his father and his family were illegally migrating to Europe. The image of the toddler lying dead on a beach near Bodrum, Turkey, went viral and shocked the world. The second example is about Anders Breivik, the Norwegian terrorist who, disguised as a police officer, shot dead 69 people at a youth camp on the island of Utøya in 2011 and then detonated a bomb in the government district of Oslo, killing eight people. In total, over 323 people were injured.
The story of a mass murderer
Anders Behring Breivik,Anders Behring Breivik, who changed his name in 2017 to Fjotolf Hansen and in 2026 to Jan Johansen, is a Norwegian mass murderer and far-right political activist with anti-Islamic views, who on July 22, 2011 committed a series of terrorist attacks in the Norwegian capital Oslo and on the island of Utøya, in which a total of 77 people were killed. The majority were participants in the summer camp of the youth organization of the Norwegian Labor Party. They were practically children from elementary and secondary schools. In August 2012, this mass murderer was convicted by a Norwegian court of mass murder, causing a deadly explosion and terrorism and subsequently sentenced to only 21 years in prison with the possibility of extension and subsequent protective treatment.
By the way, before the attack he wrote a kind of manifesto called “2083 European Declaration of Independence”. This case was very closely followed by the media. At the trial, Breivik testified that he had tried to "save Norway and Western Europe from cultural Marxism and the Muslim takeover" by his actions. When the verdict was pronounced, the murderer saluted in the courtroom. All the journalists present immediately released a photo of Anders Breivik saluting to the mass media. In addition to the fact that the information was a signal and triggered the main process of fascism in Central Eastern Europe, it also manipulated those who were Breivik's supporters, whether they were individuals, groups or movements in a simplified sense. "Look, I can murder so many people for such and such reasons (I don't want to go into detail about them here), and I will get 'only' 21 years and a relatively handsome criminal record for it."
I can even continue to profess my faith, I have the will and freedom to continue to express myself, even in court. I can also continue to study. We have here a prototype of a person who manipulates the young generations with the help of the media in a subliminal emotional impact, and the result is the growth of a national movement. Moreover, I ask: is it ethical not only to salute in court, but also to present this mass murderer purely in news and visual terms? Do they realize the consequences of this information? Where is the code of ethics of a journalist?
photo: Anders Behring Breivik – a mass murderer who, with the help of the media, launched the renewal of fascism
The Story of a Syrian Boy
Here is another story, just as unethical. A great stir was caused by a picture of a drowned Syrian boy. An unfortunate little boy named Aylan Kurdi, who drowned off the shores of the Greek island of Kos, where some of you may have visited on holiday. His photograph on the beach, where his body lay with its face in the sea, went around the world.Here is another story, just as unethical. A great stir was caused by a picture of a drowned three-year-old Syrian boy named Aylan Kurdi, who drowned in the Mediterranean Sea while he was heading to the shores of the Greek island of Kos, where some of you may have visited on holiday. His photograph on the beach, where his body lay with its face in the sea, went around the world.
The picture was actually intended to spark a debate about helping refugees and to convince, impress or soften public opinion in Europe that it must gradually accept refugees, especially from third countries. But throughout the entire time, you will not learn in the main information field what the meaning and motivation of this migration wave to Europe is, that these migration waves are not only controlled by the mafia, but that behind this mafia there are hidden politically powerful leaders, often under false promises that Europe is waiting for you. This manipulatively creates pressure on public opinion to succumb to emotions and accept the doctrine that we must accept refugees, instead of making a policy so that there is no war in their countries and they can build the economy and social structures so that they can develop primarily in their homeland.
But back to the drowned child. Today we clearly know that the child's corpse was manipulated. It was discovered that the boy's dead body had not washed up on the beach where he had been photographed, but on a rocky spot that was not very accessible to journalists, so the body was transported by the organizers to a more photogenic beach and placed at the foot of the waves to wash away the traces of manipulation. Journalists were called in and photographs were taken cheerfully, perhaps unhappily.
The main world news channels then gave this photo priority number one. In the end, everything fell apart, and the world agencies that wrote about it completely unethically diverted attention to the topic of ethics, so that the main cause was not discussed and the real culprits could not be traced. And what is the most unethical and tragic thing about this event? It is not just that the journalists perceived this event unethically, but that for some reason these migration processes exist.
This whole story speaks volumes about the character and moral "values" of those who control this entire process through the media and disgustingly manipulate us. Finding a poor, dead child, moving its corpse to a better and more photogenic place and then arranging the dead child correctly for a more impressive photo is boundless monstrosity... This has nothing to do with moral values or journalism.
Television as an ideological center
It is not for nothing that it is said that our television is the ideological center of the current system. The capitalist media operate within legal frameworks, but they determine them themselves in such a way that the majority of society has no idea what the goals of those who control the media are. All manipulation takes place on the basis of psychological perception and reception of information, both of the individual and of the entire society. Consequently, a manipulated public opinion is created from the very beginning.
Extensive scientific studies are being conducted on how to influence a person in his activities. For example, the armies have been most interested in neurosurgery recently. Today, even a method of manipulating human behavior has developed to such a level that a person performs certain actions without having the opportunity to influence it in any way, or even be aware of the given situation at all. All this only on the basis of submitted, correctly interpreted, but key information.
Legal legislative frameworks of the media sphere
One of the most important laws for us in the Czech Republic is the so-called Press Act 46/2000, the Act on Rights and Obligations in Publishing Periodicals, and Act No. 231/2001 Coll., the Act on the Operation of Radio and Television Broadcasting.
I would like to quote from this second law.
§ 32
Basic obligations of broadcasters and retransmission operators
(1) A broadcaster is obliged
a) to operate broadcasting in its own name, on its own account and at its own responsibility and to bear responsibility for the content of the broadcast,
b) to ensure that broadcast programmes do not promote war or depict cruel or otherwise inhumane acts in a manner that is belittling, excusing or approving of them,
c) to ensure that broadcast programmes do not incite hatred on grounds of sex, race, skin colour, language, belief and religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, membership of a national or ethnic minority, property, birth or other status,
d) to ensure that broadcast programmes do not contain subliminal messages,
e) not to include in the broadcast programmes that may seriously impair the physical, psychological or moral development of children and adolescents, in particular by containing pornography and gross self-serving violence,
f) not to show, without reason, persons dying or exposed to severe physical or mental suffering in a manner that diminishes human dignity,
g) not to include, between 06:00 and 22:00, programmes and trailers that could endanger the physical, psychological or moral development of children and adolescents; This obligation does not apply to the broadcaster if the broadcast is available to the end user on the basis of a written contract concluded with a person over 18 years of age and a technical measure is provided for it that allows this person to restrict access to the broadcast to children and adolescents,
And immediately this law provides an alibi for the legal exception:
h) to ensure that the radio and television broadcast of programs to which the restriction under letter g) applies is immediately preceded by a verbal warning that the program is unsuitable for children and adolescents and that a program that could endanger the physical, psychological or moral development of children and adolescents is marked in the case of television broadcast with a visual symbol warning of its unsuitableness for children and adolescents throughout the broadcast.
Unsuitable, but watch!
So in fact, this leads not to preventing the actual broadcast of a problematic program that disrupts the moral development of children and adolescents, but only to marking it, which soon becomes logically more attractive to youth. So ethics here is purely alibiistic and in most cases even counterproductive.
Here you can see the very systemic dysfunction of legality towards the rights of the user and society in general, not just public media institutions. RPRTV is simply connected to the management of these institutions and in fact enables them to violate it by not even notifying them of the objectionable nature of the program, but on the contrary, it fully functionally creates a kind of protective filter against public criticism of these media.
Here you can also see the legal ambiguity and relativization in the case of legal maneuvering to clash with this law. By the way, for example, I haven't seen a warning for a long time that this film or program is unsuitable for children and young people. Apparently because it is calculated that children will find everything on the Internet, from instructions for explosives or suicide to pornography associated with real violence. By the way, psychologists clearly state that pornography itself is not as harmful as violence between people, and violence committed in intimate moments is all the more dangerous because it is practically difficult to detect.
Go through the program of any television channel this week and see how many programs during the week will be without some violence and streams of blood. This is not only unethical, but it is a clear manipulation of our children, but also of the entire society. It is not surprising that, for example, the number of murders in the Moravian-Silesian Region increased by more than 20% from 1989 to 2010.
So many examples today. However, you must not be too distracted. It is necessary to learn to work with information, as well as to know what meaning each has and how to defend yourself from manipulation. But that will be another time.
Jan Vojtěch , editor-in-chief of General News